If someone asked me what my favorite genres are, I probably wouldn’t think of tower defense. That’s kind of odd, because it’s not uncommon for me to like the tower defense games I play. It’s actually funny. When the time comes to rattle off my favorite games, stuff like Plants vs. Zombies, GemCraft, PixelJunk Monsters, Crystal Defenders, or Ninjatown probably wouldn’t warrant a mention. Yet all the games I just listed have likely stolen more life from me than smoking has. I can’t put my finger on why this niche genre doesn’t hold a special place in my heart. Perhaps it has to do with these games having a drop-off point where they stop feeling fun and begin feeling more like a time sink. It’s the same reason why MMOs like World of Warcraft or Phantasy Star Online also wouldn’t make the short list of most amazing games I ever played despite investing years of my life playing them.

One of four screenshots chosen by AirWave Games to showcase their game on the Xbox Live Indie Game marketplace. And thank God. I was worried this would be one of those titlescreenless games for a second there.

I’m not sure that’s it though. Because I’m typically satisfied when I finish a tower defense title. And not just in a “thank God I don’t have to play any more of that” type of way. Oh, that factors in a little bit. Among other things, it’s typically around that time that my brain starts to remember to do important things like doing my job and taking a shower. But it’s bizarre, don’t you think? It’s almost like upon completion of a tower defense game, my brain immediately deletes any record of me having fun. Some kind of survival mechanism, no doubt.

Spoids is the first traditional tower defense game I’ve reviewed thus far. I’ve done hybrids like XBLA’s Dungeon Defenders, action-bent ones like Video Wars, and whatever the fuck you would classify The Cannon under. Oddly enough, the two XBLIGs were leaderboard games and Dungeon Defenders was one of my favorite games of 2011. I honestly don’t know why this isn’t one of my favorite genres. I’m starting to think I might be unconsciously racist against it. Maybe that’s why I was so apprehensive to review Spoids. It’s one of those games.

Spoids has a nifty presentation and semi decent voice acting (which might be a problem for other reasons, more on that later), but this is really a plain-Jane, no frills, utterly generic tower defense game. It’s kind of fun too. Unfortunately, the balancing in difficulty is a bit off, and by “a bit” I really mean “there is no balance at all.”

There’s eight levels in Spoids, so the game is pretty short. It’s single player only, so the only replay value comes in the form of medals. Every stage is graded on the platinum-gold-silver-bronze scale and is based on various benchmarks the game sets for you. Each objective is clearly spelled out, but usually comes down to staying alive for X amount of time and/or not taking damage. This is a problem. I totally aced the first stage and figured I was going to be gung-ho to rip Spoids to shreds in about an hour. Nope.

It’s rare that I talk to my fellow critics about a game before I write my own review, but in the case of Spoids, I talked to my amigo Tim Hurley of Gear-Fish, who did a review of this a few days ago. Like me, he didn’t score many medals outside of bronzes. He also didn’t finish the game. As it turns out, I actually made it further than he did. What it comes down to is the speed of which enemies hit is much faster than you can reasonably be expected to build your defenses. You only get extra money based on the enemies you kill, so you’re very limited in what you can do to defend yourself. You can set turrets to attack specific enemy types, or fire on them based on parameters that you set, but otherwise the scope of what you can do is limited. In later stages, where there are multiple enemy entrance points and various channels for them to deviate from, I tried and tried and tried to do anything to score better than a bronze medal and couldn’t do it. I’m convinced that it’s probably impossible sans one specific method which the developers themselves figured out in development.

Spoids was the straw that broke the camel’s back and inspired my recent editorial on game difficulty. As maddeningly tough as stages 4 through 7 were, at least I was able to beat them (after multiple attempts with each), albeit in the most minimum way possible. Stage 8’s only goal is “fend off the entire attack.” Couldn’t do it. Spoids has several enemies that you have to build specific towers to fend off. There’s invisible enemies that phase in and out. You need to build radar towers to make them visible. However, these have a limited range (I swear it seemed more limited by game’s end) and cost money that can’t be spent on things that actually attack. Likewise, waves of flying enemies come in that are only vulnerable to missile towers, which don’t attack anything else. The thing is, the missile towers kind of suck at their job, so you need to build a lot of them. But, they cost way too much money given that they can only attack one enemy type that appears only sporadically. Yet, even when caking half the screen in them on level 8, the flyers still got by. I shit you not.

There’s also carrier enemies that are total bullet sponges. Even when putting up the most powerful turrets, along with stuff to slow them down (which you can’t really afford on stage 8 given all the other shit you need to be doing), they take an absurd amount of hits to destroy. And once they die, they unleash fast-as-hell enemies that skate right past your defense and lead to your failure. You have to juggle all of this. I never came remotely close, and I probably tried no less than fifty times using no less than fifty different combinations of defense. Again, I’m sure someone on the development team beat this (at least I sure hope they did) but literally nobody I talked to this week about the game (six people, including Tim) could.

Despite having fun, I can’t recommend Spoids in its present state, because I believe in a fair fight and I don’t believe you get one with it. I do have to note, before hitting the brick wall at the very end of the game, I did have fun. I think. Again, my brain deletes all memories of joy related to tower defense titles. But I have found various post-it-notes scattered throughout my house saying “Spoids is fun. Don’t forget.” Yes, it is fun. It’s also infuriating and maybe even impossible. You know what? I want them to fix the issues and I want to do a Second Chance With the Chick on this game. It’s very rare I say that in a review, but it’s true.

Oh, and in closing, the Spoids is 240 Microsoft Points, which is overpriced in my opinion. Of course, their hands were tied because it came in at 200MB. The cut off for 80 Space Bucks is 150MB. Which leads me to ask this question: where the fuck is all that 200MB going? Maybe in voice overs. It has those. They’re nicely done, but totally unnecessary. Otherwise, the graphics are kind of simple. Not horrible, but not exactly cutting edge or anything. I can’t tell you what I thought about the music because I typically play games with the sound muted. I like to hear myself think. But seriously, what happened to this game? How did it balloon to 200MB? Why is it so fucking hard? And why am I tempted to go take another crack at it? It’s got some Spoiding to do.

See, I did a Ricky Ricardo thing there. He was Cuban, like me. Also, not funny.